Camp Fire Is Affecting My Choices

Being a Camp Fire USA leader is great. I love helping the kids and watching them grow. It is a very rewarding job, so is my Birth Assistant work (which I have a birth coming any moment now) but that is another blog.

Last year, I kinda floated through the curriculum doing the best I could with the resources I was given. But the kids were in their first year too, most of them kindergarteners, so they were floating along doing the best they could as well. We had fun, learned a lot and did a few service projects.

I think the kids are ready for a whole lot more this year. I got a voter pamphlet in the mail yesterday and Chloe was very interested in voting and how it works. Camp Fire made it easier for me to explain since we decide as a group what to do and the kids pay dues to pay for activities. So taxes and programs were easily explained as dues and projects. I'm sure she wouldn't have passed any social studies test after our conversation but it was a crawl in the right direction, which I'm sure we'll go more into during this Camp Fire year. The kids are going to inch into more group decisions, eventually when they get high enough in level they're supposed to be mostly member run with just adult guidance which will be cool for them.

This year I see Camp Fire affecting my lifestyle more and more. How can I be a good Camp Fire leader and teach conservation if I myself don't even recycle (even just pop cans). And how can I teach nutrition lessons if I don't have good food choices at home for myself and my family. I really have become aware of this this last summer. Even yesterday I was looking up how to start a recycling program here in my home, which we still don't do. I'm only on step one of the three R's. I've been making serious efforts to reduce our waste which in turn has helped us eat better. Most foods with little packaging are usually more healthy... like fruits and veggies and we eat a lot more rice now which I buy in large bags instead of small boxes. (though I still can't figure on how to ditch the clear plastic produce bags completely. Things like bananas and oranges I don't worry about because they have a thick peel, but tomatoes go in the bag.)

The lunch box that Chloe has was an effort to do both reduce waste and give her healthy lunch choices (and it's lots of fun for me). The typical American school kid generates 67 pounds of discarded school lunch packaging waste per school year (how many sporks and paper sacks is that). It won't do much to just have Chloe doing it, but I have that whole service project lesson on "everyone does a little and something big can happen". So, I have to put aside my pessimism and teach her to be optimistic about her good choices.

I've finally bought some reusable grocery sacks, which happily I get a small refund for using. It's a pittance but they will eventually pay for themselves. Every store (except the evil WalMart) seems to have these, so some people must be thinking about this. The hard part is having them when you need them. I read somewhere that reusable sack users should keep the bags in their car so they're always there. I should stuff mine in my truck right now!

Anyway, I still eat meat. Hopefully that will never change. I love meat and I truly believe that humans are naturally omnivorous and supposed to eat meat. It's a the natural thing to do. (Though perhaps the small farm approach is a bit more environmentally friendly than stock farms. Maybe I'll look into buying half a cow from a small farm.) And I still wash myself with soap and lots of hot water (I'm so wasteful :D) But Camp Fire is getting me thinking about how much waste my family produces and how much crap we feed ourselves. These things have been on my mind and affecting my habits for 6 months or so. Kenny has noticed the changes and asked me if I was going all organic on him now, which he seems to like (I cook a lot more interesting dinners now). It's hard to be a good role model and teach the kids to be healthy and good stewards of the planet, but hopefully all my efforts will help them make better choices in the future when they're in charge.

Now if I could just get off my ass and be active once in a while.

3 Going on 10

Nic has the next birthday in the family. It lands smack-dab on Thanksgiving Day this year. We've talked about his SpiderMan birthday several times to get him excited about the happy event.

Every time I ask him about his birthday and how old he's going to be on his birthday he responds, "I'm going to be 10". He wants to be 10 so bad. I don't know what is so special about 10 but it is his magic number. I'll correct him and say,"no, you're going to be 4 this year!". He just either gets a little sad or most often, he makes his face like Mr. Furious from mystery men and gets angry with me.

He's so cute sometimes. The other morning, when I was still in bed, he came into my room and said, "look my legs are bigger. I'm little but my legs are big!". And whenever I call him baby or big boy he corrects me by saying, "I'm a little boy." I think my favorite way to tease him is to call him dude or mister. I always get a response of, "I'm not dude, I'm Dominic!" It makes him so mad.

I wonder if after his birthday he will tell people he's 4 or 10. Will I finally be allowed to call him big boy?

CampFire USA Leader Training

So, my co-leader Lori and I went with another local club leader, Carrie, up to Spokane Valley for a day long leadership training for CampFire. It was a great opportunity to share ideas and talk about the direction the council is going in. I had a blast with my caravan group. There were moments where I didn't think we'd ever stop laughing.

Lori's husbands cousin :) put us up for the night. Waking up at 4 and driving up for an all day meeting just didn't sound like any fun. It was a lovely home out in the countryside of Deer Park. Unfortunately it wasn't heated and it was around 40 degrees outside, so it was cold. We made use of the many heavy blankets available to us. We were served a warm breakfast and we had some lovely company from our host. It was a nice stay. The house was about an hour from our destination point though, we had some interesting dilemmas with logistics. But we just left the house at 7:30 in order to get there in time.

We got to meet the new council program manager whom I just think is great. She is quite charismatic and her experience and background will add a lot to the INC. She has a lot of great ways to get kids active and involved and I'm positive that even though she has one of the most stressful and underpaid jobs in the world she will be terrific in her new role.

I really underestimated the importance of the paperwork that I'm supposed to require parents to do and Lori and I will definitely be more diligent this year in our registration, insurance, field trips and financial records. That was some of the most useful information that I left with. We shared a lot about our website and expressed the desire for more clubs to head in that direction. It would help so much to be able to see what other clubs are doing.

Kenny worked on a little program for me last spring (in order to fulfill graduation requirements for Regis) It is a web based program for scout style groups to use to keep track of their individual accomplishments. Specifically tailored for Camp Fire, it can be a useful tool for leaders and members to record trails completed and track service hours. It was brought up at the meeting and they were quite excited about it. It may be something that scout groups all over the country will utilize... I think thats pretty cool.